Disabled resident grateful for act of kindness after trees cleaned up

In this article from the Beaumont News, Gilbert Plamondon, a utility account manager for Davey in Canada, tells readers what they can look for in their trees to avoid this type of storm damage in the future.

Posted: August 14, 2015

By Omar Mosleh

An unfortunate accident caused by Mother Nature led to the local branch of a large corporation carrying out an act of good will for a local disabled resident.

On the night of Aug. 10, resident Mark Pickup, who is paralyzed from the waist down due to Multiple Sclerosis, noticed there was a particularly nasty storm brewing.

“I heard some wailing out there and then tree came down and took out the trampoline,” Pickup recalled.

The fallen tree destroyed the trampoline Pickup had for his grandchildren, but thankfully missed his home. Still, he knew he had a challenging situation on his hands.

“I didn’t know how I was going to move this tree while in a wheelchair,” Pickup said. “I thought, how am I going to afford this? Because a job like this costs thousands of dollars to clean up.”

In fact, two trees had fallen, one onto his property and one from his property onto his neighbour’s property. He showed the photos of the fallen trees to his son Dean, who later posted them on Facebook and showed them to his friend Gilbert Plamondon.

“He didn’t suggest anything, he put them on his Facebook,” Pickup said. “And I woke up this morning wondering how I’m going to get this paid for and this phone call comes in and it’s Gilbert.”

Plamondon, an account manager with Davey Trees, explained that Pickup didn’t have to worry about a thing – the company was coming over to clean up the trees free of charge.

“At first I was pretty sad for Mark, because I know he loves these trees,” Plamondon said. “I saw the photos and thought ‘my gosh, you’ve got to be kidding me’.”

“And I said I’m going to call the boys this morning and instead of them doing their regular jobs we’re going to come here and give Mark a hand,” he added.